What did you do? (Infatuated fae #2)

5. Present Day

5

PRESENT DAY

Caly

T he moment we came through on the other side of the portal to Seelie, we were greeted by a beautiful woman with warm brown skin and an orange-tipped sword that matched the color of her shoulder-length curls.

Stepping out from the ring of mushrooms, I nearly hurled all over the vibrant green grass, still unused to the dizzying sensation of passing through portals.

“You okay?—”

Eli’s words were cut off when the guard pressed the large sword flush against his neck.

My pulse picked up seeing a blade at my best friend’s throat.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

I took a step toward them, ready to remove the blade from Eli’s throat and turn it on her.

Eli rolled his eyes and held up his palm to wave me off.

“Mia, you know who I am. I helped train you,” Eli grumbled.

The woman smiled. “Proof. Hurry up, my shift is almost over,” she barked at him as if he weren’t the Seelie prince.

She had sharp hazel eyes that held a threat every time they landed on me.

He let out a sigh and held the pinky finger from his right hand out to her.

As she pierced the pad of his finger with the tip of her sword, I rushed her.

“Caly, it’s?—”

The breath knocked out of my lungs and I realized I was lying on the grass.

The guard had one knee smashed against my throat while she held a small ball of light in the air.

“Mia, let her up. She is with me and is only granted access to the portal if I am with her, all right?”

I glared at the nodding guard while he helped me to my feet.

“It’s for your protection, trust me,” he said.

He smiled when my glare turned on him.

“She had to check my blood. Seelie fae bleed gold, but Seelie royal blood is iridescent. It is two different shades of gold when held against the light.”

As we continued our journey up a neat and tidy dirt path, Eli informed me that Mia was a Lumins guard for the Seelie portal. Apparently they had recently needed to ramp up protection, placing guards at every portal into the realm.

Appreciation rose within me that they had women guards.

“Wait, how will I travel once I become a Seelie royal? Will magic make my blood change or something?” I asked with a laugh.

Eli’s stare kept to the ground. “I suppose that’s a question for my mother.”

My hand absently covered the cylindrical pendant hanging from my neck, rubbing the intricate design, the white-gold vines encasing the small capsule that held my sister’s ashes.

A neighbor behind our field happened to be one of the paramedics that tried to save them…or what was left of them. She had brought some of my sister’s ashes to me, and I’ve never been more grateful for anything in my life.

The sturdy necklace was only removed from its place around my neck when I had an order from the queen. Then it was removed and kept in a tiny red velvet bag until my return.

Adrianna didn’t need to see the monster I’d become.

I tucked the pendant back against my skin and adjusted my butter-yellow sundress.

I despised dresses.

After my last trip to a fae realm involved being trapped in a dungeon, wearing the same blood-caked dress for ages, I’d vowed I would never wear a dress again.

But here I was, as usual, the need to please this particular fae family outweighing all of my own feelings. I knew Queen Saracen expected me to look the part when I arrived, and I would deliver.

She preferred me in girly dresses and had made no qualms about letting me know.

I wanted to please her—kill an evil prince, wear a yellow sundress… Whatever it took, I desperately needed her to accept me.

“I hope lunch is ready when we get there; I’m starved. Human food is horrible compared to our food,” Eli groaned as we continued walking.

“You didn’t seem to think half of my refrigerator was horrible last night,” I quipped.

“I was doing you a favor and cleaning out your disgusting fridge,” he replied while pretending to be offended.

I rolled my eyes and laughed so hard, the unfamiliar sound startled me. I never got to feel like this.

My eyes caught on the white dress shirt pulling across Eli’s chest. His pecs tightened the fabric as his arms moved at his side. When had he gotten so…manly?

“I bet Mother had Chef make pistachio ice cream for you,” Eli chirped.

I quickly steeled myself and smiled as we continued up the dirt path.

When I was seven, shortly before my eighth birthday, I had watched an ice cream commercial where a very happy family dug into bowls of pistachio ice cream. They smiled and laughed, each full of the deepest love I had ever seen. The father laughed and teased the kids.

I knew immediately that I was no longer a vanilla girl.

No, pistachio was my new flavor.

It didn’t matter that I’d never so much as tasted a pistachio. I wanted what they had, that love and closeness. I craved everything they had in that commercial—even the ice cream.

That week was the same week that held the day, the hour, the minute that would be forever etched into the darkening recesses of my mind.

That was the week my mom and sister had been killed in the car accident.

The same week Saracen stayed with me and brought Miss Claire to watch over me.

I remember quite distinctly how numb I had been.

A lot of things changed for me that week.

I didn’t want Saracen and Miss Claire near me.

I wanted Mom and Adrianna back. I should have been in that car accident too. It felt like my punishment was that I hadn’t been allowed to go with them.

It was a punishment—and a terribly painful one.

To this day, I’ve never wished for anything more than that I’d died in that car with my family.

But no. So it was up to me to make the best use of my time here.

After I had stumbled upon the Seelie queen in her tiny form and protected her from the blackbird, a few things had happened. I’d learned that fae in the human realm who spent too much of their magic would shrink until they could return to their realm. I had learned that the blackbird was actually the Unseelie Queen Tenebris in a different form. And I’d seen the golden queen often, as she’d visited and left her son frequently while she tended to business, leaving me to play with him.

Queen Saracen had been the one to relay the news of their death.

I remembered the way she struggled to get the words out of her pink lips when she showed up at my door.

She and Eli had stayed with me for weeks to make certain that I was safe and wouldn’t be shipped away to some foster family I didn’t know.

Mom didn’t have any friends that I knew of, and there was no family left besides me. My grandparents had long since passed, and my father wasn’t a part of our lives. I had no one. Mom was always a little anxious and paranoid about the people in our lives.

A short time later, Eli had gifted me the tiny, vined pendant to keep her ashes in. He had snuck it in from Seelie and had even had it engraved. Amongst the delicate white-gold vines that held the ashes, a tiny oval citrine sparkled on a small hinge, and when you unlocked the hinge, it revealed an inscription that had been etched unto the vial:

FEUHN—KAI—GREEYTH

Eli told me it was an old fae language and that it meant “eternal love and friendship.” It’s something we said to each other all the time now. It must be a really old language because even other fae like Miss Claire had no idea what it meant. That made me like it even more—something else special just between us.

Saracen tried to be kind and tender. But she was the queen of a fae realm that humans were forbidden from entering. Eventually she and Eli had to return to rule their kingdom (well, not Eli, he was close to my age, an infant by fae standards, though the aging of fae was unbelievably incomprehensible for me). In her place, she had left a nursemaid, Miss Claire, to take on my care between her very scattered visits to the human realm.

That week, the modestly sized freezer of my small house had been packed with tubs of every flavor of ice cream imaginable, the tiny freezer threatening not to close if even one more pint were to be added. Apparently word had gotten around our small town about the accident, and everyone assumed ice cream would be exactly what a newly orphaned child needed.

I didn’t want to drown in ice cream, I just wanted to drown someone.

I had a really hard time controlling my anger back then.

One day, on a particularly hard afternoon, I opened the freezer and found pistachio was among the many pints. At that point, I was willing to try anything that could help me grip hold of even a tendril of comfort.

Flashes of the commercial played in my head, and I knew it would give me that same, sought-after experience.

That was the first day I realized how hard everything would be.

I remember one day, not long after that, when Saracen’s gorgeous monarch butterfly wings had appeared at her back in the garden behind my house. Eli had been red as a beet while she yelled at him for skipping his courtly duties. Instead, he had snuck in to visit me and run through the fields of poppies, where we used to race the falcons across the big meadow.

It was Eli’s favorite thing to do.

I only knew a few things about faeries at that time: fae that have wings are usually of a royal bloodline of some sort, and they generally only release them when they feel something so strongly that it takes over their system. It is completely out of their control, and it’s usually a sure sign something bad and dangerous is about to happen.

At least in my experience.

Queen Saracen had been so mad at me for distracting Eli, she had threatened to put a magical block on the portals, barring Eli from reentering the human realm to see me. She didn’t, of course.

Not then anyway.

He returned a few weeks later, but that afternoon, she had left with Eli in such a rush, I had been upset for days. Was she going to hurt him? Would they come back? Would she be so mad she would take away Miss Claire? I would be left completely alone.

As far as the system and anyone else was concerned, I didn’t exist. It had been the only way to keep the state and everybody else from questioning who was actually caring for me. Queen Saracen had erased any evidence that I had ever existed.

It worked well—so well that no one ever came and tried to take me away or see me.

I had been beside myself when they left that day, wishing more than anything that I could go to the golden castle and tell her it had been my fault and not Eli’s.

But I couldn’t.

No matter how badly I wanted to be with them, I just couldn’t.

Humans were forbidden from entering the fae realms—they had been having problems with humans trying to assassinate royalty. So instead of being able to go to the Seelie realm, I drowned my worries in pistachio ice cream, needing it to give me everything the people in the commercial had felt.

I loathed it.

The second the sharp, faulty sweetness touched my taste buds, I despised it. It was a terrible, false flavor masquerading as something wonderful. Pistachio was disgusting, but still I forced myself to eat the entire tub of disappointment. Every single bite reminded me of something I couldn’t have, couldn’t feel. It reminded me of how strong my commitment to the plan needed to be. How important it was that I didn’t falter.

From then on, pistachio was the only ice cream I ate, remembering each and every time the foul taste touched my tongue that I needed to be strong so I could finally be with my family. Only then would I experience the loving feeling of those in the commercial.

That was kind of how I felt now as I stared at the golden castle—the castle that I had spent my entire life trying to get to.

I stood on the brick path of the field and stared at the obnoxious golden monument. The sun pelted off the shimmering gold turrets and shot straight in my eyes, blinding me.

I couldn’t help the nagging feeling of disappointment that had settled in my belly.

I could do this. I had to—for them.

But it was too large, too bright.

Too…happy.

I had thought a feeling of happiness would flood me or that I would immediately get a feeling of accomplishment.

In the short walk from the portal in the royal forest to the front entrance of the Seelie castle, it seemed as though the sun had focused on burning my skin, giving it an unpleasant pink hue I’d only seen on baby hippos. It was obvious that this was not the same sun I was accustomed to in the human realm.

“Once we get inside, I’ll ask the monarch witch to spell your skin with some protection from the sun,” Eli said sympathetically as he made a face at my neon-pink forearms.

I nodded in response, unsure of what else to say.

Having spent a significant stretch in the Unseelie realm, predominantly in the dungeon and inside the Unseelie castle, my eyes and skin had grown even more accustomed to darkness.

Much like my taste in men apparently.

“You okay?” Eli asked, grabbing my hand as we both stared at the giant castle’s entrance.

My stomach churned from nerves—it was showtime.

My eyes stung as I squeezed Eli’s warm hand. Light wisps of smoke lifted from mine, and this time, we both looked away in an attempt to ignore it.

“Yeah,” I said, shaking myself out of my wallowing. “Just nervous, I guess, and tired.”

Tired wasn’t the half of it. I had gone from tirelessly fighting to get close to Mendax, the Unseelie prince, to fighting to keep myself away from him.

He had been nothing like they had told me.

I sighed, feeling it down to my ankles. I had fought for my life in the trials Mendax and his bitch of a mother had forced me to partake in. I trembled, still able to feel the weight of the blade in my hand.

Ouch!

I gasped, dropping Aurelius’s hand to clutch at my chest.

It hurt—emotionally and physically.

It hurt in a way I’d never be able to forget.

My time was running out.

“It’ll be okay. Mother is going to be so happy to see you,” Eli said.

I noted the uneasy cracks in his typically smooth voice. Warm droplets of sweat dripped down what felt like every inch of my body. I squeezed my eyelids shut tightly and held still for a moment before forcing them to reopen. I refocused on the giant, shimmering castle once again.

The tall wildflowers rustled in a soft breeze, tickling my leg. I grabbed a handful of the stems and tore the clump out, throwing them to the ground.

“Maybe you should rest before we see the queen,” Eli said gently as he stared at the crumpled pile of flowers at my feet.

“No,” I stated firmly. “I want the pain to stop—I want my heart whole again as soon as possible.”

Maybe if my heart was whole again, it would fill this horrible ache that filled it.

“Caly?” Eli questioned, resting his hand on my lower back.

“What, Aurelius?” I snapped, instantly regretting the use of his full name as soon as he shrunk backward.

Relief washed over me though when our eyes locked. I knew he understood.

I had noticed the way his touches seemed to linger now. How his eyes darkened sometimes when he watched me.

That couldn’t happen.

It had nothing to do with Mendax.

Aside from seeing Eli briefly at the trial with Mendax, it had been years since I had seen him in person. And now, the comforting best-friend touches held something deeper, something that felt more breakable.

In my eyes, Aurelius was always the golden boy who somehow, no matter how tough, always seemed to do and say the perfect things, always put a Band-Aid on me when my broken bits felt too rough. He was my hero.

So why couldn’t I stop thinking about the villain?

If Mendax had been the villain though, then what did that make me, the person who stabbed him in the back? In some stories, the person who slayed the villain instantly became the hero.

I knew I wasn’t the hero. Which was just one more reason Eli needed to stay away from me. He’d hate me soon enough.

I had sacrificed every facet of my life to stand in the exact place I was standing now.

So why was I dreading it?

It was beautiful. A hint of briny sea was on the breeze. Perhaps the water was nearby? Hundreds of vibrant monarch butterflies fluttered around. Several had been with us since the human realm and were now dancing atop the swaying flowers. Birds chirped happily, swooping merrily across the bright-blue sky. A fluffy bluebird with a teal crest fluttered in front of my face before landing on a nearby oak branch to watch us with a joyous expression, and I swear to god, I think a squirrel smiled at me.

My wide eyes turned to look at Eli.

“What?” he said with a shrug. “You’re in Seelie now.”

I turned back to the flowers in a riot of colors assaulting my eyes. Don’t get me wrong. It was beautiful—it just felt like someone else’s beautiful.

I shook my head, not sure of what to say that wouldn’t hurt his feelings, unsure of why it rubbed me the wrong way.

What, it’s too happy? Everybody wants to be happy.

This was what I wanted. I was being too harsh, too jaded.

The hair on the back of my neck tingled like I was being watched, and the training that had been drilled into me took over, and my palms began to sweat. Eli seemed oblivious as I whipped around and peered back into the far-off edge of forest. Had the guard followed us?

There was nothing.

But I could feel it—that sense of panic animals got when the predator marks them.

As if sensing my thoughts, Eli broke the silence, letting out a soft chuckle. “This isn’t like the dark and monster-ridden Unseelie realm,” he said with a smile. The sunny prince waved me onward, to the last stretch of narrow path between us and the castle’s main entrance. “This is the good side, Caly.” He tucked a daisy behind my ear.

And just like that, I was reminded of which parts of me to hide.